Conlogue wins Beachley Classic

The Australians were routed, but the Beachley Classic maintained its tradition for producing first-time winners on the women's world tour when American Courtney Conlogue claimed the title on Saturday.

The 19-year-old Californian shaded 18-year-old Hawaiian tour rookie Malia Manuel 13.17 to 11.56 in the final at Dee Why on Sydney's northern beaches.

Conlogue follows in the tradition of Australians Stephanie Gilmore and Tyler Wright, who each won their first senior title at the Beachley Classic, while current world champion, Hawaii's Carissa Moore, also won in Sydney as a teenager.

Both Conlogue and Manuel had never previously advanced beyond the quarter-finals of a senior tour event.

"After a while it was like 'gee, am I stuck in the quarters?'," Conlogue said after accepting the $US30,000 ($A29,120) cheque, the richest prize in women's surfing.

"Once you make that step, you want to keep going, so I just tried to win this one after I got to the semis."

Competitors had to contend with tricky 1 to 1.5m waves which yielded few high scores.

Conlogue and Manuel ended Australia's hopes of winning the event after their semi-final defeats of Rebecca Woods and Wright respectively.

The other three Australians to make the last eight all bombed out in the quarter-finals.

Despite her quarter-final exit, four-time world champion Gilmore (33,200 points) retained a strong lead over Fitzgibbons (26,900) in the world title race.

Wright (24,700) moved up one place to third, followed by Conlogue (24,400) and defending world champion Moore (24,400), who lost to Conlogue in the third round on Friday.

While Gilmore is in a strong position with three events left, she is not talking up her prospects of a fifth world title.

"It's going to be a really interesting last few events for me, they are all beach breaks, so they are going to be pretty similar to what we had here in the last day," Gilmore said.

"So I'm going to have to step it up, that's for sure. The world title is a long way away."

Fitzgibbons did not want to dwell on a missed opportunity to close the gap on Gilmore.

"It was one of those opportunities that you wanted to take full advantage of, but I think there's going to be another one around the corner and I'll just keep believing the next one is mine," Fitzgibbons said.

Wright conceded it would be difficult to reel Gilmore in.

"It's going to be a hard ask - there's a lot of hard work going into that," Wright said.

"Steph has such a commanding lead already, she really would have to come unstuck."

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